Class:X Long Reading Summary

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

-HELEN KELLER

The Story of My Life, first published in 1903, is Helen Keller's autobiography detailing her early
life, especially her experiences with Anne Sullivan. The book is dedicated to inventor Alexander
Graham Bell. The dedication reads, "To ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL Who has taught the deaf
to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies, I dedicate
this Story of My Life."

SYLLABUS FOR TERM I

(CHAPTERS 1-14)

SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTERS

CHAPTER 1
Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA, as the eldest child of
Arthur.H.Keller, a Captain in the Confederate Army and Katherine Adams, an educated lady from
an intellectual family. She was deprived of her sight and hearing due to illness that struck her
when she was nineteen months old. ‘Ivy Green’, where Helen spent her childhood after her
illness, was a paradise, a profusion of greenery and flowers. She spent most of her time in the
garden, guided by her extra perceptions of smell, touch and hearing. The wonderful scenes of
Nature that she had imprinted in her mind during the days before her illness remained evergreen
in her memory. She recounts her confusion at being isolated from a world she had known, and
her frustration at not being able to renew contact with it. She could not help being bad tempered,
though she knew that she was in the wrong. With the love and care showered by the members of
her family and her teacher, she gradually accepted her fate.
CHAPTER 2

Helen’s hands compensated for the loss of her sense of hearing and sight. She developed a
language of signs of her own with the help of her mother. She learnt to distinguish things by
touch and she could fold and put away clean clothes. Her constant companions were Martha
Washington, the child of their cook and an old dog, Belle. Both Martha and Helen loved to do
mischiefs, and they went about indulging in all kinds of pranks, though Helen tried to boss over
Martha and had the final say in their friendship. She goes on to recount some of the childish
pranks that she indulged in. The timely intervention of Katy prevented Martha from cutting
Helen’s hair. Helen was saved from burning herself while drying her apron, by her nurse, Viny.
When she learnt to use the key, Helen locked her mother in the pantry for three hours and later
locked her teacher, Miss. Sullivan, in her room, hiding the key under the wardrobe. Thus the time
to channelize Helen’s energy and enthusiasm had come. The family moved to a larger house
and her father helped her to acquire language by spelling words into her hands and making her
repeat them. Helen felt jealous of the attention given by her mother to her sister. She even went
to the extent of overturning the cradle, when the little baby was sleeping in it. She goes on to
speak of her close and touching relationship with each of her parents, whose support and love
helped her become strong and confident.

CHAPTER 3
As she grew older, the yearning to express herself grew in Helen. The language of signs was not

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of much help. It was decided to take Helen to Dr. Chishlom, a famous oculist in Baltimore. On her
way to the oculist, that she managed to communicate to her aunt to sew two beads that she had
pulled out from her aunt’s cape in the place of her doll’s eyes. Her Aunt understood and sewed
them in the right place. This made her really excited. She kept herself busy, making friends on
the bus and playing with toys. Though Dr. Chishlom could do nothing for Helen, he suggested Dr.
Alexander Graham Bell’s name. On his advice, consultations were made with Mr. Anagnos,
Director of the Perkin’s Institute in Boston, who helped her in finding a teacher who could
educate Helen. Helen’s joy knew no bounds.

CHAPTER 4
Miss. Sullivan arrived on March 3, 1887, when Helen was six years and nine months old. Miss.
Sullivan gave Helen a doll sent by the blind children. When she was playing with it, Miss. Sullivan
spelt ‘d-o-l-l’ into Helen’s hand. Helen was quick to imitate it. She felt extremely happy and proud
to have spelt the letters correctly. Slowly she was able to spell many words and understood that
everything had a special and unique name. At times she was confused and once when she could
not get the explanation for ‘mug’ and ‘water’ as different words, she showed her anger on her doll
by dashing it on the floor, which made it break into fragments. Her teacher picked up the
fragments and took Helen outside. She cleared her confusion by making her feel the flow of
liquid on her hands. This made her realize that each word gave birth to a new thought. She felt
repentant of what she had done and tried to put the fragments of the doll together.

CHAPTER 5
As Helen continued with the exploration of the world with her hands, she became more confident.
Miss. Sullivan was always with her and she helped her discover the beauty of every object of
nature and every part of the human body. She made her student realise not only the
benevolence, but also the ferocity of nature. Once on a warm and humid day, when Helen sat
waiting for Miss. Sullivan, who had gone to fetch the lunch basket, on the branch of a tree, the
wind blew very hard, lashing against the branches. The frightened Helen clung to the branch with
all her might, till her teacher came and helped her down. She is terribly shaken by the event. Her
fears lessened as the days passed by, until one beautiful spring day she climbs a gentle mimosa
tree seats herself on its branch. Helen had learnt a new lesson-that Nature“wages open war
against her children and under softest touch hides treacherous claws.”

CHAPTER 6
Helen’s store of vocabulary increased every day. She yearned to have more information of the
same subject. Her teacher tried to make her understand what love was. Her first conscious
perception of an abstract idea was triggered when her teacher asked her to ‘THINK’ in order to
arrange beads in a symmetrical pattern. Finally with the help of the sun, cloud and brief showers
, her teacher made her understand that love cannot be touched, but one can feel the sweetness
that it pours into everything.
CHAPTER 7
Miss. Sullivan gave Helen cardboard slips on which words were printed in raised letters. These
words were then arranged on a frame to form short sentences. Miss. Sullivan illustrated whatever
she taught with a beautiful story or poem. She taught her History, Geography and about the pre-
historic era, the sea and its creatures, the growth process of plants and tadpoles and many more.
She made raised maps in clay, so that Helen could feel mountain ridges, valleys and rivers.
Helen never liked Mathematics. But her love for Biology equalled that of Geography. She turned
to nature and its processes to understand lessons that applied to human life as well- the order
and beauty of a plant growing from an insignificant bud. Miss. Sullivan’s genius, quick sympathy

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and loving acts made Helen’s education very beautiful, interesting and thrilling. For Helen, her
teacher was everything.
CHAPTER 8
Helen and Miss. Sullivan prepared for Christmas at the Tuscumbia House. Helen took part in the
festivities and played a guessing game with her teacher. She was invited by the Tuscumbia
school children on Christmas Eve. She handed over presents to the children and received a lot of
gifts in return. Miss.Sullivan presented her with a canary. Now she had a little bird, Tim, to look
after and Miss. Sullivan taught her how to care for her pet. But as ill-luck would have it, Tim was
eaten up by a big cat a few days later, when the cage door was let open by mistake.

CHAPTER 9
In May 1888 Helen visited Boston with Miss Sullivan and her big rag doll. During this train
journey, she is calmer and eager to listen to Miss. Sullivan’s descriptions of the passing scenery
and the people at the stations they pass. Unfortunately the doll, Nancy, was reduced to a heap of
cotton, when the laundress secretly tried to give it a bath. At the Perkins Institution, she made
friends with the blind children. She was quite happy with her stay at Boston. She visited Bunker
Hill, Plymouth and The Great rock. She made friends with Mr. William Endicott and his daughter
and was touched by their kindness. For her, Boston was ‘The City of Kind Hearts’ mainly due to
the benevolent and kind Mr. Endicott.

CHAPTER 10
The chance that Helen got to spend some days on Cape Cod with a dear friend, Mrs. Hopkins,
fulfilled her desire to touch and feel the mighty ocean. She was almost drowned in the sea, but
the waves luckily threw her back on the shore. Helen took a horseshoe crab home as she
wanted to keep it as her pet. But the crab disappeared, leaving Helen disappointed. She learnt
the lesson that it was not kind or wise to force a poor dumb creature out of its natural habitat.

CHAPTER 11
Helen spent the autumn months with her family on a mountain, Fern Quarry, about 14 miles from
Tuscumbia. The mountain was thickly wooded. Many visitors came to Fern Quarry and related
stories about wildlife. Helen considered them to be brave hunters who could frighten even
ferocious animals. She enjoyed the ride on her pony which she had named Black Beauty
because of its glossy black coat. One day Mildred, Miss. Sullivan and Helen lost their way in the
woods. They narrowly escaped from being hurt by climbing onto the braces under the bridge on
which the train passed.

CHAPTER 12
Once, Helen went on a visit to a village in New England. The entire village was covered with
snow. Then came a snowstorm and tiny flakes of ice were falling around. The loneliness that
Helen and others felt was forgotten for a while, when they were sitting round the fire. During the
night the wind became furious. At last when the sun appeared, Helen and others slid over snow,
sitting in a toboggan.
CHAPTER 13
Helen had been trying desperately to speak, but she was not successful in her attempts. She did
not lose heart. The story of Ragnhild Kaata, a deaf and blind girl in Norway, who had been taught

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to speak was narrated to her in 1890, by Mrs. Lamson. This story inspired her to continue with
her attempts. Miss. Sullivan took her to Miss. Sarah Fuller, Principal of the Horace School, who
agreed to teach Helen herself. Miss. Fuller’s simple but unique method made Helen speak her
first connected sentence- “It is warm”. Thus with Miss. Sullivan’s tireless efforts and Helen’s
strong determination, the latter was able to speak on her own. She discarded the manual
alphabet as a medium of communication. Now Helen had a great sense of self-esteem. Even her
thoughts seemed to flow more easily, when she expressed them. She could now explain the use
of the manual alphabet, also called finger spelling. In fact, this phase can be considered as the
second part of her life story.

CHAPTER 14
Helen wrote her first book, “The Frost King”, (initially titled “The Frost King”). She showed it to her
teacher and the story was read out to her family members at dinner. She sent it to her friend,
Mr.Anagnos, who published it in one of The Perkin Institution reports. But it was discovered that
the story was similar to Miss. Margaret.T.Canby’s “The Frost Fairies” which had appeared in a
book called “Birdie and His Friends”. Helen was accused of plagiarism, though she could not
figure out how it had happened. When questioned later by a teacher, she admitted that Miss.
Sullivan had talked to her about Jack Frost and his wonderful works. She was accused of
plagiarism by Mr. Anagnos himself. She was questioned by a court of investigation and the
judges forced her to acknowledge that she had listened to the story, “The Frost Fairies”, that was
read to her. She felt humiliated, though nothing had been proved against her.

Now she became highly cautious while writing. It was Miss. Sullivan’s encouragement that drove
away the psychological fear from her mind that she was a ‘thief of words’. Miss. Canby herself
sent a bracing message stating that she did not consider Helen guilty of any wrong and that she
believed that Helen would grow up to become a famous writer. In fact, what Helen had done was
not a deliberate or conscious attempt at copying another person’s idea. She had just reproduced
the ideas that had become a part and parcel of her life, in her own words. But then, she had lost
one of her dearest friends, Mr. Anagnos, because of the allegation of plagiarism.

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